I finally went to get some estimates on repairing my rear fender rust. I wish I would have diagnosed the problem when I got the car, because now the rust has eaten through the metal and I need to have a large section of the body cut out and new pieces fabricated and welded in place. The left side is worse than the right side, but after having the car inspected it's obvious why- the right side was in an accident before I bought the car. That explains why my bumper has a slightly larger gap on that side and why my trunklid has a little spot of body filler underneath.
Anyway some of the higher priced shops in town want $2000 to do the repairs, while another really nice shop that has a reputation for not raping people wants just under $1000 to do it all.
Ideally new rear quarter panels would be the way to go, but according to the shops that's like 2k+ per side.
I decided I wanted to keep the Lude and put a ton of miles on it since it's mechanically sound, I love how easy it is to work on, and I'm just now putting the performance parts on that I've wanted for a long time. This whole rust thing kind caught me by surprise, I was thinking maybe $400 worth of painting.
It's not the extra cost that bothers me, just the fact that once you start to rust out it's a never ending battle that could come back at any time. I will be moving out of this climate once the repairs are completed, has anyone had to deal with welding in new sheetmetal on a vehicle? Was it a long term solution or did you end up having to get rid of the car down the road because of continued rusting?
It's not the extra cost that bothers me, just the fact that once you start to rust out it's a never ending battle that could come back at any time. I will be moving out of this climate once the repairs are completed, has anyone had to deal with welding in new sheetmetal on a vehicle? Was it a long term solution or did you end up having to get rid of the car down the road because of continued rusting?
A good repair shouldn't be any more prone to rust than the original body sheetmetal - your lude is worth fixing if you want a reliable daily driver to keep for the longhaul. If the shop carefully cuts out all the rust instead of a typical sand/fill/spray, you'll be fine.
And like you said, accidents can bring on rust really fast - the rest of your car should be fine. I have (had after my repair last month) rust on my 40,000 mile 2001. A year ago, a Tacoma backed into my passenger rear fender at about 1/2 mph but still left a nice dent. Even though I had it fixed (reshaped) right away, water kept collecting under the rubber trimpiece and I got a mild case of cancer. Fortunately I was able to just use a dremel and take 1/4" of metal off the inner lip, hit it with primer, and then cover it with touchup paint. Cutting away all the damaged metal is key - usually you go beyond the point of visible rust top play it safe.
As far as quarter panel replacement goes, $1000 sounds very reasonable.
The rust is even worse than I thought, I gutted my trunk to work on a new amplifier mounting location and saw that the driver's side wheel well has rust all over the seams as well. It might be possible to grind this rust down and repaint, but I'm really worried that the whole wheel well might be bad in which case I would have to do what repairs I could and get rid of the car sometime in the future The rust is all because of a really crappy repair job that some shop did on my car before I bought (carfax report shows the car had "major damage" on the rear quarter panel). I can see traces of bondo and paint overspray. A good repair job would have prevented this, now I'm the one that gets screwed.
Lesson learned- don't buy a car without running a carfax. Mine showed up clean for all the major problems, but had I known the car was in an accident I would have looked over the damaged area extensively... and probably not bought the car.
Last edited by NotoriouSH; 05-20-2006 at 11:19 AM.
I dropped the car off a couple days ago, I can't wait to get it back I'm going through Lude withdrawals!!
The good news is the rust in the trunk isn't into the metal so they have a special chemical that they will use to stop it. I also found the source of the problem- water leakage behind the weather stripping. Make sure you guys keep a close eye on any signs of rust, it could be caused by some easily fixed problem that will lead to costly repairs later if you let it go unchecked. Most of my problems were prevantable but I caught them waaay too late!
As soon as I get the car back I'm putting on the neuspeed sports and koni yellows
I dropped the car off a couple days ago, I can't wait to get it back I'm going through Lude withdrawals!!
The good news is the rust in the trunk isn't into the metal so they have a special chemical that they will use to stop it. I also found the source of the problem- water leakage behind the weather stripping. Make sure you guys keep a close eye on any signs of rust, it could be caused by some easily fixed problem that will lead to costly repairs later if you let it go unchecked. Most of my problems were prevantable but I caught them waaay too late!
As soon as I get the car back I'm putting on the neuspeed sports and koni yellows
good luck! I second the idea of keeping a close eye on rust and repairing anything you find ASAP. 1 hour of your own labor + $6 for sand paper and primer beats $1000+ for body shop work a year down the road.
I'm glad my Texas lude had no rust when I removed the weather stripping from the rear quarter panels. I put a few coats of RustBullet on the metal lips so rocks wouldn't chip the paint away. Two years later and no problems.
Just got the car back today! They did a fantastic job fixing it up, the metal work looks great, the paint is a very close match especially considering how difficult pearl is to work with, and they put on a nice heavy black layer of rubberized undercoating. In the trunk they used some kind of an acid treatment on the rust and then sprayed some black stuff in there, possibly like POR or rustbullet, or maybe it's just undercoating?
I'd put pics up today but I'm about to go camping for the weekend, when I get a chance I'll put up some before and after shots to show the repairs. I feel like my Lude just got cured of cancer, and only for $1070.76!
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The rust is all because of a really crappy repair job that some shop did on my car before I bought (carfax report shows the car had "major damage" on the rear quarter panel). I can see traces of bondo and paint overspray. A good repair job would have prevented this, now I'm the one that gets screwed.
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